When Jared McCann was 4 years old, his mother, Erin, would enlist his help at the grocery store.
If Erin McCann couldn’t find something, she’d send Jared on a mission that wouldn’t end until he either located the item or asked someone to point him in the proper direction.
Now, nearly two decades later, those trips serve as an important example of what makes both McCanns special. Jared, a speedy forward the Penguins acquired in a Feb. 1 trade, has figured out a way to mesh on this team.
Erin McCann, meanwhile, refuses to let an ongoing battle with multiple sclerosis slow her down, an everyday fight that pushes her youngest son to strive continually for more at hockey’s highest level.
“She’s been a big inspiration in my life,” Jared McCann said. “Looking at how she handles herself every day and what she has to go through with the MS, not being able to walk sometimes, it humbles you. It makes you realize there are a lot bigger problems in the world.
“I’ve always felt that I have the greatest job in the world, but she reminds me of that every day.”
You won’t find many more likable players inside the Penguins dressing room than McCann, a talented skater and goal-scorer who has provided an injection of life into the team.
Cast in several different roles here, the 22-year-old native of Stratford, Ontario, has found a way to make it all work, a combination of enthusiasm and ingenuity that would make his mom proud.
“I think he’s seen me work hard, deal with everybody and with my MS, just staying positive,” Erin McCann recalled by phone last week while driving to Pittsburgh with her husband, Matt, for the Penguins’ final two games of the regular season. “I’ve always been that way. You have to be. You don’t feel sorry for yourself.”
It’s sort of the family motto, Matt McCann explained, the product of a blue-collar lifestyle where Matt owns the family construction company and Erin handles the business side.
When the McCanns needed to figure out babysitting for Jared, they would bring him to the gravel yard. When he needed a couple extra bucks before turning pro, Matt would assign Jared to a crew, with his son doing the grunt work.
“When he would come to the yard, they would push him,” Matt McCann said. “He learned from a lot of those guys. Those guys are very creative and hard-working guys. He’s learned some of that from them, too. He wasn’t the boss’ son. He’s a guy. He’s one of the guys.”
Jared McCann was pretty observant, too. He always loved the picture his dad had hanging in his office of a frog choking a bird. In handwritten, capital letters, it reads: “DON’T ‘EVER’ GIVE UP.”
In a world of sports parents who either coddle, meddle or both, the McCanns are a little different. Jared was pushed at all times and was never, ever afforded the easy way out.
“To me, ‘I can’t’ means ‘I won’t,’ ” Matt McCann said. “It started as my motto at work, but I think it’s trickled down to the kids, too. I don’t hear ‘I can’t’ out of them very often because they know what they’re going to hear back.”
Given the example those kids had in Erin, it’s a wonder they ever tried in the first place.
At 18, Erin lost the use of her right hand. Three years later, she was having severe lower-back pain. She tried to use a heating pad, thinking the pain would go away, but the next day she couldn’t walk. The diagnosis soon followed.
There’s been a loss of vision in her right eye and tingling in her hands or feet. The pain and severity can vary, but usually there’s something.
“My balance is going,” said Erin, who will soon turn 58, marking 40 years of living with MS. “It’s been going on for awhile.
“You just have to think about the day, what you have to do, and you plan it.”
Erin McCann might plan a little differently now, but she’s not about to adjust what she likes to do. She walks with a cane, for one, and tries to stay in certain areas of the house where she feels most comfortable.
Twenty-plus years ago, however, Erin McCann defied the odds by doing something much greater: having children.
Before Jared was born, Erin said she was told by her doctors that giving birth would be both difficult and a bad choice health-wise. If it happened, there was a good chance it would exacerbate her MS. So the McCanns adopted a son from Guatemala, Justin, who’s now 27.
But a couple months later, Erin wound up pregnant after all and gave birth to Jared’s older sister, Jaimie. (Jared also has a half-brother, Jordan, who’s 34.)
“I believe having kids kept me positive and not focusing on my disability,” Erin McCann said. “You kept going. Every day you had something to do. You couldn’t sit around and feel sorry for yourself.”
These days, Erin takes Lyrica, the latest in a string of MS drugs she has tried to manage pain and the nerves “racing” in her legs. Jared remains eager and willing to help, although that usually creates a humorous clash between mom and son.
On her way to Pittsburgh, Erin expected to see Jared waiting outside for his parents to arrive, although she didn’t anticipate allowing him to do much of anything.
“When we get there, he’ll be there saying, ‘Mom, here, let me take this.’ ” Erin said. “Sometimes I have to say, ‘Jared, I can do it myself … for now. Maybe in the next 10 years I might need more of your help. But right now, I’m gonna do it.’ ”
That sort of mindset helps Jared McCann now, but it was an even bigger deal when he was just starting out in the NHL.
The Vancouver Canucks drafted McCann in the first round (24th overall) in 2014. To them, he was supposed to be a future building block. Instead, after bypassing the AHL, he never fully transitioned to the NHL level and was eventually dealt to Florida in 2016.
When things didn’t work out there, either, McCann started to question his own ability and whether he could actually make a career out of hockey. The one thing he didn’t do, however, was complain about anything to his mom.
“Oh, no. You never, ever complain to her,” Jared said. “She’ll always say there are bigger things to worry about than stuff like that. When I talk to my mom about hockey, she always tells me to stay positive with it. She’s a very positive woman. She has to be with her situation.”
Since coming to Pittsburgh, Jared McCann’s positive attitude and willingness to do whatever it takes to succeed have been exactly what the Penguins have needed — in large part because they didn’t get those traits out of former centers Derrick Brassard and Riley Sheahan.
And while there will surely be criticism of Jared McCann in the playoffs or beyond, don’t look for the Penguins forward to be overly affected by any of that. He’ll probably just call his mom, knowing there’s some positivity and inspirational advice waiting on the other end.
“You’re always going to have people judging you no matter who you are,” Jared McCann said. “It happens. It’s life. But I feel like my mom has been through so many things. She’s had people tell her what she can and cannot do.
“One of the things I’ve learned from her is that negativity breeds negativity. In hockey, you’re not always going to have a great game. But if you stay positive, things will eventually go your way.”
Jason Mackey: jmackey@post-gazette.com and Twitter @JMackeyPG.
First Published: April 10, 2019, 11:30 a.m.
Updated: April 10, 2019, 1:50 p.m.
